Fiber-optic cables are common in a telecommunications network. Light reflects within the cable to transmit data. If the light is not reflecting properly, data-transmissions may be adversely affected. An Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) device can be used to troubleshoot a communications link such as a fiber-optic cable. The OTDR measures the elapsed time and intensity of light reflected on an optical fiber. The reflectometer can—by itself or in connection with other tools—compute the distance to problems on the fiber. Exemplary problems include excessive attenuation and line breaks.
An OTDR device generates OTDR data. The OTDR device is applied to a desired communications link to produce a trace file. This trace file contains data relating to the optical fiber's performance. The format of the trace file varies across OTDR manufacturers. File formats are typically designated by an extension. By way of comparative example, a .TXT file—a file having a .TXT extension—is a text file and a .DOC file is a word-processing file natively associated with MS WORD® offered by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. A first native OTDR file format is SOR and is associated with Telcordia Technologies, Inc. of Morristown, N.J. Alternative native OTDR file formats include .WFM and .CFF, which are associated with devices made by Tektronix, Inc. of Beaverton, Oreg. as well as .PSF, which are associated with devices made by Photon Kinetics, Inc of Beaverton, Oreg.
Telecommunications carriers need access to the data stored inside these native files. But carriers typically use proprietary databases that need to be populated with the data in the OTDR trace files. Historically, a company develops filtering devices and converters to extract the data from native trace files and to store the data in a database for future retrieval. Each time a trace-file format changes, however, a new converter must be developed if the original cannot be adapted. Moreover, if an entirely new trace-file format is to be used, a custom filter and/or converter must be coded. If a company uses OTDR devices provided by multiple vendors, then multiple filters and converters must be developed and implemented. This vendor-specific implementation is constraining, lacks scalability, and hinders technological advances.
For any number of reasons, a carrier may wish to use OTDR devices produced by different vendors: some products are higher quality, some are less expensive, etc. Enabling a carrier or any entity to be able to store, retrieve, and manipulate data in an OTDR-device-independent environment is desirable. The current state of the art can be improved upon by providing a method and system that eliminates the need for custom data extraction by at least allowing native OTDR trace files to be stored in their native format while maintaining the ability to subsequently view data stored within the trace files.